Todd Carmichael said:For someone who has experienced "freaky weather" in the Antarctic up close and personal, reports this week that baby Antarctic penguins are freezing to death due to "freak rain storms," came as no surprise.
Fellow explorer Jon Bowermaster had this to say:
"Everyone talks about the melting of the glaciers but having day after day of rain in Antarctica is a totally new phenomenon. As a result, penguins are literally freezing to death."
The sad truth is there's been a lot of freaky things happening in the Antarctic lately.
If little baby penguins freezing to death isn't enough, a new study out last week from the University of Washington has found that penguin populations are plummeting due to climate change, pollution and other factors like fish stock depletion and loss of breeding habitat.
Despite it still being the winter season in the Antarctic, with temperatures as low as minus 85 Fahrenheit, the massive Wilkins Ice Shelf is collapsing as we speak.
And then there's the "freaky snow."
With all that ice, it might seem kind of backwards to call snow at the South Pole "freaky," but it is. The Antarctic is literally a desert of ice with an average of 1-inch of precipitation each year.
Antarctica is in fact the the coldest, highest, windiest and driest continent on earth.
Last year, when I attempted to become the first American to reach the South Pole, solo and unaided, it was the "freaky snow" that stopped me in my tracks.
At first the snow fell only lightly. Clouds of tiny crystals sank from the sky like plankton to the sea floor. I stood for a while, still hooked to my sled, unbelieving. It was not clear if what I was seeing was real. My mind and body had become so deeply worn from the hundreds of miles of hauling that at first I could not be sure. I was alone, exhausted and doing my best o stay alive and reach the South Pole on a dwindling supply of food and fuel.
Many days before, injury had taken my expedition partner, along with too much of our supplies. The image of the evacuation plane was now a foggy and distant one, and now here I was, standing alone in the middle of Antarctica witnessing something not easily believable - it seemed to be snowing in the driest place on earth.
But what began as a curious illusion soon turned to real alarm.
Within hours the crystals thickened and turned heavy - and soon visibility would be completely chocked off. By midnight a rare easterly rose, climaxing at to 40 knots. What began as a crystal dance now turned to a full-blown blizzard - the equivalent of torrential rain in the middle of the Sahara. What I was seeing was real, the world had indeed turned upside-down, and it would be more than a week before it could right itself.
I was trapped, wrapped in a blizzard somewhere around the 83rd parallel. A few hundred miles away at Base camp - things were no better. I spoke by satellite phone from my buried tent to Mike Sharp, the Logistics Veteran who had not missed an Antarctic season since 1977.
He could offer little comfort:
"I've never seen anything like this mate. I don't know what to make of it, but whatever you do, don't move"
Of course I moved, I needed to move, I was running short of food... Struggling over the ice, blinded by fierce white, I began to wonder what had caused this. Could this be an isolated event, or was it part of a bigger system? Could this be part of larger phenomena - like Global Warming?
Last year I was wondering, but now I know for certain that even in the coldest, driest place on earth something just isn't right.
On November 8, 2008 Todd Carmichael will attempt to become the first American in history to reach the South Pole, solo and unaided.
980509 said:Q: Well, how could that be? What caused these glaciers?
A: Global warming.
Q: How does global warming cause glaciers?
A: Increases precipitation dramatically. Then moves the belt of great precipitation much farther north. This causes rapid
buildup of ice sheets, followed by increasingly rapid and intense glacial rebound.
thinker said:http://www.sott.net/articles/show/163781-Meltdown-in-the-Arctic-is-speeding-up
vs
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/15/goddard_arctic_ice_mystery/
So which one is it? Is it melting or not?
Quote from: 980509
Q: Well, how could that be? What caused these glaciers?
A: Global warming.
Q: How does global warming cause glaciers?
A: Increases precipitation dramatically. Then moves the belt of great precipitation much farther north. This causes rapid
buildup of ice sheets, followed by increasingly rapid and intense glacial rebound.
Metamorphosis said:Strange Clouds Spotted at the Edge of Space
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/165015-Strange-Clouds-Spotted-at-the-Edge-of-Space
Some food for thought. Kind of mesmerized in thought between these clouds and the underwater volcanoes, in terms of connection. The eruptions in Eluch's post and anart's quote helped me remember the link above. The volcanoes did the erupting back in 1999, or at least that is when the quaking/eruptive activity got discovered.
...
William Chapman, a researcher with the Arctic Climate Research Center at the University of Illinois, tells DailyTech that this year the Arctic was "definitely colder" than 2007. Chapman also says part of the reason for the large ice loss in 2007 was strong winds from Siberia, which affect both ice formation and drift, forcing ice into warmer waters where it melts.
Earlier predictions were also wrong because researchers thought thinner ice would melt faster in subsequent years. Instead, according to the NSIDC, the new ice had less snow coverage to insulate it from the bitterly cold air, resulting in a faster rate of ice growth.
...
Walt Meier, research scientist at the NSIDC, has contacted us disputing the validity of Steven Goddard's methodology, and of his use of University of Illinois data to question the NSIDC's charts. We accept that these two data sets are not directly comparable, and that the University of Illinois data does not provide support for Goddard's charge that the NSIDC data is incorrect. We reproduce Walt Meier's response below. Walt Meier as provided further detail on the calculation of sea ice area and extent in the comments to this article:
The author asserts that NSIDC's estimate of a 10% increase in sea ice compared to the same time as last year is wrong. Mr. Goddard does his own analysis, based on images from the University of Illinois' Cryosphere Today web site, and comes up with a number of ~30%, three times larger than NSIDC's estimate. He appears to derive his estimate by simply counting pixels in an image. He recognizes that this results in an error due to the distortion by the map projection, but does so anyway. Such an approach is simply not valid.
The proper way to calculate a comparison of ice coverage is by actually weighting the pixels by their based on the map projection, which is exactly what NSIDC does. UI also does the same thing, in a plot right on the same page as where Mr Goddard obtained the images he uses for his own analysis:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
The absolute numbers differ between the UI and NSIDC plots because UI is calculating ice area, while NSIDC is calculating ice extent, two different but related indicators of the state of the ice cover. However, both yield a consistent change between Aug. 12, 2007 and Aug. 11, 2008 – about a 10% increase.
Besides this significant error, the rest of the article consists almost entirely of misleading, irrelevant, or erroneous information about Arctic sea ice that add nothing to the understanding of the significant long-term decline that is being observed.
Steven Goddard writes: "Dr. Walt Meier at NSIDC has convinced me this week that their ice extent numbers are solid. So why the large discrepancy between their graphs and the UIUC maps? I went back and compared UIUC maps vs. NASA satellite photos from the same dates last summer. It turns out that the older UIUC maps had underrepresented the amount of low concentration ice in several regions of the Arctic. This summer, their maps do not have that same error. As a result, UIUC maps show a much greater increase in the amount of ice this year than does NSIDC. And thus the explanation of the discrepancy.
"it is clear that the NSIDC graph is correct, and that 2008 Arctic ice is barely 10% above last year - just as NSIDC had stated."
Meteorologist Anthony Watts, who runs a climate data auditing site, tells DailyTech the sunspot numbers are another indication the "sun's dynamo" is idling. According to Watts, the effect of sunspots on TSI (total solar irradiance) is negligible, but the reduction in the solar magnetosphere affects cloud formation here on Earth, which in turn modulates climate.
...
Other researchers have proposed solar effects on other terrestrial processes besides cloud formation. The sunspot cycle has strong effects on irradiance in certain wavelengths such as the far ultraviolet, which affects ozone production. Natural production of isotopes such as C-14 is also tied to solar activity. The overall effects on climate are still poorly understood.
anart said:Metamorphosis said:Strange Clouds Spotted at the Edge of Space
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/165015-Strange-Clouds-Spotted-at-the-Edge-of-Space
Some food for thought. Kind of mesmerized in thought between these clouds and the underwater volcanoes, in terms of connection. The eruptions in Eluch's post and anart's quote helped me remember the link above. The volcanoes did the erupting back in 1999, or at least that is when the quaking/eruptive activity got discovered.
Hi M, could you clarify what connection you're seeing here - perhaps with information from the article? To my knowledge, the submarine volcanoes referenced with ice caps are currently active, but perhaps you're speaking of other ones?
The WHOI researchers found that evidence of a series of strong quakes and eruptions as big as the one that buried the ancient city of Pompeii took place in 1999 along the Gakkel Ridge, an underwater mountain range snaking 1,100 miles from the northern tip of Greenland to Siberia.